the taking of the Bastille and the defeat of the Sections by Bonaparte; whereas the Revolution was preparing from the time of Louis XIV., and is not yet ended in the time of President Faure.  Next to the capital mistake of misconceiving the entire character and result of the Revolution, comes the insolence which treats the public men of France during a whole generation as mere subjects for ribaldry and caricature.  From this uniform mockery, Mirabeau and Bonaparte, two of the least worthy of them, are almost alone exempted.  This is a blunder in art, as well as a moral and historical offence.  Men like Gondorcet, Danton, Hoche, Carnot, not to name a score of other old Conventionels, soldiers, and leaders were pure, enlightened, and valorous patriots—­with a breadth of soul and social sympathies and hopes that tower far above the insular prejudices and Hebrew traditions of a Scotch Cameronian litterateur—­poet, genius, and moralist though he also was himself.

But though the French Revolution is not to be accepted as historical authority, it is profoundly stimulating and instructive, when we look on it as a lyrical apologue.  It is an historical phantasmagoria—­which, though hardly more literally true than Aristophanes’ Knights or Clouds, may almost be placed beside these immortal satires for its imagination, wisdom, and insight.  The personages and the events of the French Revolution in fact succeeded each other with such startling rapidity and such bewildering variety, that it is difficult for any but the most patient student to keep the men and the phases steadily before the eye without confusion and in distinct form.  This Carlyle has done far better than any other historian of the period, perhaps even better than any historian whatever.  That so many Englishmen are more familiar with the scenes and the men and women of the French Revolution than they are with the scenes and the men and women of their own history, is very largely the work of Carlyle.  And as to the vices and weakness of the Old Regime, the electric contagion of the people of Paris, the indomitable elasticity of the French spirit, the magnetic power of the French genius, the famous furia francese, and the terrible rage into which it can be lashed—­all this Carlyle has told with a truth and insight that has not been surpassed by any modern historian.

It being then clearly understood that Carlyle did not leave us the trustworthy history of the French Revolution, in the way in which Thucydides gave us the authentic annals of the Peloponnesian war, or Caesar the official despatches of the Conquest of Gaul, we must willingly admit that Carlyle’s history is one of the most fruitful products of the nineteenth century.  No one else certainly has written the authentic story of the French Revolution at large, or of more than certain aspects and incidents of it.  In spite of misconceptions, and such mistaken estimates as those of Mirabeau and Bonaparte, such insolent